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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29830191">a transmission on the midnight radio</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ackermom/pseuds/ackermom'>ackermom</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol, M/M, POV Second Person, Paths (Shingeki no Kyojin)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:01:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,071</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29830191</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ackermom/pseuds/ackermom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He will be there when you return from fighting yourself in the mirror. Through the shifting shadows on the dance floor, you will see him, and you will stop where you stand, where the worn toes of your old leather boots tread a line on the black-and-white linoleum, and even though you know he is not supposed to be there, it will suddenly all seem to make sense again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Reiner Braun/Bertolt Hoover</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a transmission on the midnight radio</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>what if paths was a dive bar</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He will appear after the fourth drink, after the bitter beer and scorching shot that you down in one, two, three mouthfuls on your stool at the bar.</p><p>You'll stumble off to the toilet as soon as the liquor hits the back of your throat, because you know it won't be long until it is racing through your veins and tearing up your heart, your stomach, and it will make you feel dizzy and feverish, like you are feeling too much and too little all at once, too numb to find your way to your feet anymore and too buzzed to sit still at the bar. You'll drag yourself upright, your hands pushing off the sticky bar top until you slide off the stool into the crowd— whose boots mumble and shuffle on the cracked linoleum floor; whose bodies are nothing but shapes in the darkness; whose conversations whisper past your ears as you move through the room; whose cigarette smoke seems to cloud the corners of the bar so you will never get a grasp on how long it goes on, or where the walls end, or how many people like you are there, dancing and shifting and sinking amid the crowd.</p><p>It has been a long time since you have seen anyone like you, you will think, as you fight your way through the masses of faceless shadows, who will rumble and jive to the music that sounds like something you heard on a record once. It will echo through the air, in your ears and your head— the low strum of a guitar and a voice, muttering something in the darkness, with the drums and the piano on an unsteady beat in the background, an accompaniment or a cacophony. You've never been able to tell, because the music only simmers, and it will never quite be loud enough to make out the words of the song or the tune of the melody, only the dim dripping rhythm that seems to go on forever.</p><p>The door to the toilet will be jammed, and you'll be stuck on the wrong side when the shot finally hits you, when a fire pierces through your blood and a heat wave washes over you, the sweat suddenly pouring from your forehead as you stand and beat your hands on the cheap wood, the strange electric lights of the bar crackling like lightning over your head as you swelter. You will think to shout <em>IS ANYONE IN THERE! </em>but you will never do it; the words will sit parched on your tongue as your throat burns, as the faceless crowd swells in the room that never ends, and you'll drop your face against the door to let out the breath you've been holding, your eyes falling shut as you try to make everything around you disappear— the hum of the lightbulbs, the neon, the smoke; the distant drum of music and the laughter of someone, something, on the far side of the bar that you will never reach; the shuddering of the doorknob beneath your clammy hand, and the way you jerk back from the door, only to find it open before you, the entrance to the dim, grungy toilet with a water-stained mirror over the sink and a single flickering light dangling above your head that shadows a strange blue over your body when you stumble inside, grasping for something to hold onto. </p><p>You'll let the alcohol overtake you as you stand quaking in the bathroom with the door shut behind your back. It will not block out the noise, and there will hardly be enough room for you to stretch your arms out, hand to hand, wall to wall, and it will feel like the ceiling is coming down on you as a raw heat pulses through your body and beads of sweat drip down to the nape of your neck, as you stare into the mirror and find you are not surprised that there is nothing there. There is nothing there or here, after all, not anymore; nothing but the liquor on the back of your tongue and the way you feel you could burn this whole joint down, if only you had one more match.</p><p>He will be there when you return from fighting yourself in the mirror. Through the shifting shadows on the dance floor, you will see him, and you will stop where you stand, where the worn toes of your old leather boots tread a line on the black-and-white linoleum, and even though you know he is not supposed to be there, it will suddenly all seem to make sense again. </p><p>He will appear to you through the crowd— a flicker through the darkness, like the light from underneath the crack of a closed door, and then a pale face, a real one with eyes, and his body, something solid from across the bar where he sits at the seat next to yours, where you left behind the empty glass with beer foam clinging to the rim in a spiderweb, and the overturned shot glass, one last drop of something brown and wretched inside that would curdle your stomach to even see it, except he is there beside the glass, waiting for you.</p><p>"Hello," he'll say when you make your way back to the bar. Your feet will drag you to him, as the liquor reaches your fingertips and your stomach winds up with static electricity, charging an energy with every step you take. </p><p>He'll be sitting there with his elbows on the bar top and his fingers fidgeting, cracking open peanuts from the crooked little crystal dish before him, shelling them with no intention of ever eating them. He'll have collected a little pile of scraps when you approach, and he'll sweep them aside when he sees you, instead of tossing them to the floor to be crushed like you do.</p><p>He'll look up at you. He'll try to smile. </p><p>"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," he will say.</p><p>"No," you will tell him. "Never."</p><p>You'll take your seat again and you'll be struck by so many things about him when he finally turns in his seat to face you— the sad smile that never seems to disappear, always lingering in his eyes even when the rest of him would have you perceive otherwise; the way the electric light falls across his pale hair, not with the hard glow of the blue and yellow that draws lines on your skin, but with a softness that will seem to beckon you to him, like the tender light of dawn on a shore you will seem to recall having visited once. He will look at you in silence, as if he is waiting for you to say something, but all words will fail you when you meet his eyes. You will not know what to say, have never known what to say. You will want to ask, as you always do, what he is doing here and how you can make him stay just a bit longer this time, but you know that he has no more answers than you. </p><p>He will crack a peanut shell between his thumbs as his gaze drops to the empty glasses before you. "I don't know how you can stand to drink that stuff."</p><p>Neither do I, you will want to say, because you don't know how you can stand it, not when the heat pools like sludge and fire in your stomach, and the liquor crackles like static through your veins, and you feel like your are sinking, falling, changing, or being dragged down to whatever else is below, beneath the linoleum dance floor that thunders and threatens to break with every shuffling step to the offbeat of the drums. Not when the beer tastes like bullets, like the lead casings discarded from your rifle, melted down to be poured down your throat. Not when the shot is blood sinking in your esophagus, and you think you will never be rid of its taste from your lips. </p><p>But you drink it. You find a way to stand it. You don't know if you've ever had a choice. </p><p>He'll drink a cola straight from the bottle— tall and thin with frost melting from the glass. You have never seen him drink from it, but he must, because it always appears with a sip or two taken from the top, the glass neck of the bottle shining with the reflection of the neon lights that burn overhead. You'll think you might be able to see yourself in the shimmering glass if not the mirror, or in the dark fizzing cola, if you look hard enough, if you lay your chin on the sticky bar top and stare until you see yourself in the bubbles and the syrup. But you won't be sure if you want to see yourself, not in the dark room with the crowd of non-faces shuffling and jiving behind you as the distant bass of something like music sends its sound waves echoing like shivers up your spine.</p><p>He will crack another peanut shell without looking at you. "I miss you."</p><p>Sideways on your stool, one of your elbows stuck to the beer-stained bar top, you will look at him, your brow folding in, the heat of the room flushing through your face, and it will take all you have to hold yourself up as you tell him, "I miss you too."</p><p>"More than you can imagine," he'll say as if he didn't hear you. "More than you could ever know."</p><p>He won't be like this one day, you will tell yourself as you sit there at the bar, watching him shell peanuts and sweep them aside, the endless repetition of meaningless activity, something to do with his hands as he sits beside you and glows in the darkness, as his brow knits with worry, with pain, with anguish, and you are sinking deeper over the edge, the taste of the lead beer growing stale and bitter on your tongue. One day you will be one drink in and he will come to you without war on his face. One day he will sit beside you and neither of you will drink at all.</p><p>"I think I can imagine," you'll say.</p><p>In response, he will drop a handful of peanuts into his cola, and it will fizz and hum as they sink to the bottom, and you'll both sit there and watch, his eyes on the peanuts sinking down into the depths of the glass, and your gaze on him as the peanut shells crack beneath his fingers and scrape against his skin, as your body seems to come undone and you find it almost impossible to hold yourself up where you sit. You will crack, crumble, and you will find yourself slumped over the bar, your dim vision still fixated on him, on his hair and the veins of his neck, on the places of him you could trace with your eyes closed and the pieces of him you are afraid to know but desperate to taste. You will reach for him with one trembling, bony hand. You will reach as far as you can, and though he sits just beside you at the bar, he will always be too far for you to touch. Instead, when the peanuts hit the bottom of the glass, he will wipe the dust from his hands onto his wrinkled uniform and he move to stand, the electric lights dancing over his hair and skin, the dull bumping of the music reaching a crescendo that bounces the peanut shells to the creaking floor.</p><p>"I'll be just outside the door," he'll tell you then, and you won't be able to move as he stands to leave you, the corners of the room crackling out of your sight as they fizz and explode like landmines, shattering the bar for as far as it goes until the only thing you can see is him, and he is on his way back to the place where you cannot follow.</p><p>And you will cry again, as you always do, "What door?"</p><p>And he will leave without answering, as he always does, and you will fall asleep on the bar top with a machine gun in your stomach that will wake you when the next round is served.</p>
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